The Goods: Los Angeles Clippers’ Bench Receives New T-Shirt

The Goods is where we highlight NBA merchandise. They could be official, they could be unofficial, or they could be the most random of all merchandise.

Lately, the Clippers’ lethal bench has been getting a few nicknames here and there. But it seems like Clipper fans have settled on “A Tribe Called Bench.” Here’s the story from ESPN L.A.‘s Arash Markazi about the beginnings of a new nickname.

I first asked Jamal Crawford, an early favorite to win the Sixth Man of the Year award, last month if he had a preference for a nickname for the Clippers’ second unit that was slowly beginning to dominate games. He didn’t at that time, but shortly afterward other writers asked fans and followers on Twitter what they thought the bench should be called.

We all had our own lame ideas. I threw out “Lob Deep,” but was immediately shot down. Dan Woike of the Orange County Register threw out “Mob Deep,” but he found out the New York Knicks had used that nickname last year. Woike then got a tweet from a San Francisco Bay Area follower with the handle @squidwai and “A Tribe Called Bench” was born.

Over the past three games, the Clippers have started to play highlights of the second unit to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario” and the #ATribeCalledBench hashtag has started trending on Twitter in Los Angeles during Clippers games.

So give credit to @squidwai about the new nickname. If you’re a hip hop aficionado (okay, I’m really not but work with me here), this was a play off the hip hop group that was making waves in the 90s, A Tribe Called Quest.

And now there is a T-Shirt for “A Tribe Called Bench.” Check it out from Markazi’s tweet.

https://twitter.com/ArashMarkazi/status/280137189583618048

The whole Clipper bench is on there. If you don’t recognize them, here are the players depicted: